Biography
Gualfard of Verona
About Gualfard of Verona
Gualfard, also known as Wolfhard of Augsburg, was a saddler who became a hermit near Verona. Born in Augsburg around 1070, he learned his craft and traveled south. The Diocese of Augsburg’s account remembers him sharing his earnings with poor people after the day’s work.
The outline of his life comes from a biography that the New Catholic Encyclopedia describes as chiefly legendary. Its account places his working life in Verona before a long period of withdrawal into a forest beside the Adige. Admirers eventually persuaded him to return to the city, where he lived as a recluse associated with the Camaldolese monastery of San Salvatore.
The surviving written tradition requires care. The Bavarian Academy’s catalogue dates the extant forms of two Lives to after 1172, several decades after his death, while allowing that they may draw on an older text. Their relationship has not been securely established. Both concentrate on his holiness and reported miracles at his tomb, which attracted pilgrims, including visitors from Germany.
The diocesan account describes his final years as those of a lay brother enclosed in a cell. He died on April 30, 1127. His wish for a humble burial near the monastery threshold was not followed: the people of Verona provided a marble coffin and buried him inside the church.
His former trade later became central to his public remembrance. In 1507, Verona’s brotherhood of saddlers chose him as its patron and erected an altar in his honor. The connection gives his cult a place in the religious life of working craftspeople as well as in monastic devotion.
His relics were later transferred to San Fermo Maggiore in Verona. A portion went to Augsburg in 1602, and the October 27 commemoration there recalls that transfer. The diocesan account locates those relics in the newer church of Saint Sebastian, where they have rested since 1909.
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